Surfaces, such as tools, hands, carpet, clothing, to name only a few, and hard surfaces such as tile, wallpaper and wood floors, often receive deleterious deposits and stains. Such deposits vary widely in their identity. Some may be quite viscous, for example mustard, catsup, and mayonnaise. Other are more liquid in nature, such as pet stains, wines, and soft drinks. Still others may be more solid or pasty, including foods, especially proteinaceous foods.
The above recitation exemplifies a broad range of materials which need to be cleaned from a broad range of deposits and stains. In response to this need, an equally wide range of cleaning compositions already exists in the market.
Generally speaking, commercial compositions are limited both in the range of their effectiveness, and also as to how efficient they really are for their intended purpose. If one intends to remove a wide range of kinds of deposits, he is likely to find a nearly-equal number of formulations to buy for the purpose. In addition, some of the stains and deposits are usually only partially removed, and with risk to the material being cleaned. On the consumer market today, for example, there is no known composition which will remove marking red wine from a white tablecloth. This product will.
Furthermore, many existing compositions are objectionable from an environmental standpoint. This composition is water-based, and is environmentally acceptable. The composition is available in 0% and 3% Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) configurations and will perform surface cleaning. This is important because, for example, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and Cal-EPA regularly publish new limits on VOC content for household products.
It is an object of this invention to provide a water-based environmentally acceptable, biodegradable cleaning composition which can be used to remove a surprisingly large range of types of deposits and stains from any substrate. Any residue of these compositions which might remain on the surface, or in the fabric underlying it, will not adversely affect the user or the surface to which it was applied. It has proved to be a considerable surprise to observe how many types of really difficult stains and deposits these compositions can remove, with little or no remaining evidence that there ever had been a stain or a deposit, or that the composition ever had been applied, all without damage to the material being cleaned.
It is another object to provide a small family of related compositions, which between them can attend to all but a few of the types of deposits and stains which predictably will be experienced.